Sze Sze turned up in a taxi in a brand new skin-tight aerodynamic suit. He looked like a Marvel superhero, if you can imagine a small, bald, Singaporean banker Marvel superhero. (No, I can't either).

His costume had strange stripes which went from the outsides of his hips to the insides of his knees. I wondered if I should tell him that he had his "knickers in a twist". He explained: "These lines on my running gear follow the line of the iliotibial band, which are muscle fibers."

We set off, jogging along the coast. The two of us ran at the same pace, so I guess the hi-tech suit didn't make much difference.

* Half an hour later, I estimated we were halfway along the route. He replied: "Actually, we've travelled 4.9 kilometers." He explained he was carrying a global positioning device which sent a pulse to a satellite and continuously recalculated how far we'd gone.

After another 15 minutes, I noticed he had something under his shirt. He flicked it up to reveal (above his chiseled stomach muscles) a device which measured his heartbeat. "It tells me that at the fastest point of the run, the slope we just did, I reached 99 per cent of my recommended heart rate," he said.

I didn't explain that I have a simpler way of finding out when I over-tax my heart. I drop dead. * We continued to pound the track until we reached our destination, a distant beach.